Watching David Dziurzynski hit the ice as if shot by a gun didn’t do much for anyone, save for raise the question of how close we’d just come to seeing an NHLer dying in an NHL game.

Leafs tough guy Frazer McLaren, right, drops the Senators' Dave Dziurzynski with a hard right hand during a fight 26 seconds into Wednesday night's game at the Air Canada Centre. Dziurzynski suffered a concussion and did not return.

Call it pointless or riveting or horrifying, the fight that stunned the Air Canada Centre was definitely a mismatch. When Frazer McLaren dropped his gloves 26 seconds into Wednesday night’s game against the Ottawa Senators, the Maple Leafs enforcer was a veteran of 20-some NHL fights.

His opponent, rookie winger David Dziurzynski, was clenching his fists in his first. McLaren is six-foot-five and 230 pounds, which meant, according to the program, that Dziurzynski was giving up about two inches and 26 pounds.

“A little bit out of his weight class,” Senators forward Zack Smith would say later, shaking his head a little, speaking of his linemate.

Call it entertainment or macho tradition or needless nonsense, the result was predictable. A couple of punches into it, maybe it looked like the makings of an even bout. A few punches later, McLaren’s fist hit the Senator’s chin. Then the Senator’s chin hit the ice. And suddenly the ritualistic violence that’s heralded by its proponents for providing energy to buildings and motivation to benches produced a distinct result. There was no rock-and-roll celebration of a heavyweight knockout. There was only the sound of uneasy murmuring in an arena not quite sure if they’d just seen a man fall on his face unconscious or fall on his face plain dead

Perhaps that’s a bleeding heart exaggerating. But watching Dziurzynski hit the ice as if shot by a gun didn’t do much for anyone, save for raise the question of how close we’d just come to seeing an NHLer dying in an NHL game.

As Dziurzynski was helped off the ice by teammates Smith and Chris Neil, his legs resembled rubber. He wobbled a little as he passed the Senators bench. He clearly couldn’t muster the strength to lift his skate blades and get through the gate to dry land.

So much for the myth that no one gets hurt in an NHL fight.

The Senators said Dziurzynski had a concussion and would not return to the game. He was seen en route to the arena’s X-ray room, but the club declined to provide further information on his condition. Smith said he’d seen his linemate after the game.

So much for the theory that fights are universally loved crowd-pleasers that energize a building. The Leafs players tapped their sticks against the boards gingerly. Ray Ferraro, the NHL alumnus who was standing between the benches doing analysis on the TSN broadcast, said the fight made him recoil in the same way he recoiled the night before when he watched a visor-less Marc Staal take a puck in the eye.

“That’s two nights in a row. The Staal thing and then this? Who wants to see somebody get hurt?” Ferraro said.

Said Randy Carlyle, the Leafs’ head coach: “Those are big tough men fighting. You see that, you just wish the trainer would get there quicker. The only thought I had was just get there as quickly as possible.”

The Leafs ended up taking a 2-0 lead some seven minutes into the game. But good luck connecting the dots between the fight and those goals and Toronto’s eventual 5-4 win.

“If anything,” Smith said, “a fight like that deflates both teams. . . . It’s scary, man. It’s a shock at first. You never know how bad he’s hurt until a while after. . . . I thought Toronto was very respectful about it, too. I’ve seen some guys celebrate after they knock another person out.”

McLaren, one observer noted, looked like he’d just seen a corpse as he skated to the penalty box. This wasn’t some brave act of police work, a Dave Semenko protecting a Wayne Gretzky in the grand tradition of vigilante deterrence and revenge. This was essentially a staged fight, both coaches sending their tough-guy lines out for the game’s second shift, no matter that the players had yet to break a sweat and the building had yet to fill, the lower bowl patched with empty seats.

Smith said Dziurzynski challenged McLaren to the fight. McLaren, who went to the dressing room after it was over to get eight stitches in a cut from one of Dziurzynski’s punch’s, said he was attempting to provide his team with a spark.

“Usually, if it’s a good fight, it gets both teams going . . . it’s just unfortunate that happened,” McLaren said.

“I’ve been on the reverse side of that, I know how it feels. . . . You’ve been around long enough something like that is going to happen to you.”

Call McLaren’s job primal necessity or sickening sideshow — the man who fulfilled his duties with ruthless efficiency spoke only the brutal truth.

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